Month: October 2018

There are more fake guides and teachers in the world than stars. The real guide is the one who makes you see your inner beauty, not the one who wants to be admired and followed.

Shams

The other day, I had a conversation with a dear friend who recently had her spiritual emergence. She talked about someone who got infatuated with her. He told her the story of Shams and Rumi and that this was the way he loved. She said that he believed to be her Shams.

Who is Shams?

Shams-i-Tabrīzī is the one the – so called – master of Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī. The one Rumi deeply fell in love with on his path to enlightenment.

Before Rumi encountered Shams, he was a highly respected scholar and a conservative Imam.

When the Sun of Tabris met the Prophet of Love in Konya in 1244 they became passionately infatuated and locked themselves up in Rumi’s library for 40 days. Their encounter was so intense no-thing else besides was possible. The people around Rumi thought he had become intoxicated and insane.

In a way he did 😉

A poem describes Rumi’s path during these days as such:

I was him

I’ve become him

I’ve become without him

I’ve become just like him

for this

I am with no face anymore.

Hmm, it’s funny to me, my friend thought that – to her lover – she was Rumi. But to me it’s more likely that she is Shams for him.

You see at least for a Sufi, Shams is much more than a person.

Shams is a symbol.

A symbol of love and a symbol of this path to enlightenment.

Anyone can be Shams to you if you truly are infatuated with your Shams.

If you want to see the stars through his eyes.

If you want to love life through his heart.

You become one with him and then you become him.

And once you become him, you see light.

And then, when you see the light, you see your own light through his eyes…

In the depth of the sea you find riches beyond imagination,
but if you seek safety, stay near the shore.

Saadi, Rose Garden

For quite some time this was the quote that welcomed the visitors of the website for my counseling services. Today, I believe to understand, why I didn’t have that many clients then: It must have scared the hell out of them 😜

Eventually, I would take the quote offline. Not for commercial reasons though but because – with some changes in my private life – it perhaps scared the hell out of me 😉

I guess I am back on track now for some deep sea diving. Yet, of course, I’m neither always aware of my fears nor my tricky ego. So I also stay near the shore at times.

However, if I truly want to encounter someone, I know no better place to encounter.

Yet, to do so, trust is necessary.

Love is necessary.

Mindfulness is necessary.

But once these preconditions are given it’s the only place I’d like to encounter.

A guy who used to work for a tech company attended a keynote speech I held at a conference in 2015. He thought I was a visionary and he believed I could help his company. Its turnover had halved over the previous five years and they didn’t know what to do.

When I met the CEO of the company for the first time he made me believe that he was seriously interested to develop a new business model.

I had a clear vision as I was able to see how it would be possible to develop a new business model without having to fire people while putting their potential into full action.

However, it turned out that the CEO was so full of preconceptions, old paradigms and dogmas that he neither understood my vision nor was he willing to trust me. Fair enough… it was his company. And basically, he wanted me to tell him he could just proceed without any changes.
Hey man, your turnover halved over the last five years 😉

Well, in any case it was my mistake. When we started the project he wanted me to proceed in a different way then I had outlined in my offer. I compromised as I thought he will start to trust me later on in the project. He never did and I truly believe that this was the case, as I was willing to compromise.

So he cancelled the project with me. Thus far it was the biggest project I had ever been hired for. So that was a major blow for me.

Looking back I realize a couple of things:

When I was younger, when I was telling people what I see in them or a certain situation, they would usually tell me I’m crazy or weird. Well, actually that is still often the case 😉 And then, I would try to convince them and weaken my-SELF.

The difference now is, that when I look back, I can see that I was usually right… not always, but very often.

Often things I had forseen did fulfill just many years later. However, when I was younger, I didn’t have that experience yet but today… I do… not being modest for once, I actually quite have a track record of future developments I have predicted.

So one of the things I learned over the last couple of months is to trust my-SELF again and trust in my own truth, no matter how crazy or weird people think I am.

There is so much I see in people… so much I see in situations. Usually it’s much more then people see in themselves or the situations they are in.

And often when I tell people my vision, they will only believe in a tiny bit of it. They will often only use a tiny bit of it. They will often only take a tiny bit of it.

It’s like, I offer people to build a paradise garden but they just go for conventional one.

Too bad for me?

No it’s really simple:

I will start again to share what I see with people but simply just work or spend time with those who are willing to trust me… no matter how crazy that stuff sounds. And usually, it sounds quite crazy… so usually you really need to overthrow your old paradigms… or trust me 😜